How to scrape your Airbnb wishlist (or any website) into Airtable
Update: you can now scrape directly from Simplescraper into Airtable using our native integration. Follow the guide here to get started.
Remember travel? That was fun. Until we're able to voyage to far away places again we can be busy planning destinations to visit - and we can use Airtable to help us. In this guide we're going to import our Airbnb wishlists into Airtable so that we can better organize our next trip.
Scraping our Airbnb wishlists into Airtable allows us to:
- Rank listings by rating or price
- Add our own notes and rating system
- Visualize listings using the gallery view
- Share and plan with the people we're travelling with
When we're done the finished results will look something like this:
To get our Airbnb data into Airtable, here's what we're going to do:
- Scrape our Airbnb wishlists using Simplescraper
- Use the Data Fetcher app in Airtable to pull in the scraped data from Simplescraper
- Organize our wishlist in Airtable
Sounds easy, and it is, so lets get started.
Scraping the Airbnb wishlist with Simplescraper
Click here to load the Airbnb wishlist scrape recipe in Simplescraper. Copy the recipe to your account and do the following:
- Update the recipe with the URL of one of your own Airbnb wishlists (example: https://www.airbnb.com/wishlists/12345)
- Add your Airbnb cookies to the recipe (see this guide for how)
- Save the recipe and then click run
Simplescraper will scrape your Airbnb wishlist and display the results after about 20 seconds. Now click on the API tab and copy the URL that is in the API field.
That's the Simplescraper part all done, now on to Airtable.
Importing the Airbnb wishlist into Airtable
Video showing how to install Data Fetcher
We're going to use Data Fetcher - an Airtable app that allows us to import API requests - to pull in the Airbnb data that we've just scraped. If you haven't already installed Data Fetcher here's what you need to do:
- create an Airtable base with a table called 'airbnb wishlist'
- in your base, click on apps on the top right-hand side
- click on 'Add an app' and search for 'data fetcher'
- Add the app and create a free account
Video showing how to configure data fetcher and import data
Now that we have Data Fetcher installed, download this JSON request configuration (right-click and save) and upload it into Data Fetcher using the upload button on the main screen of the app. Once you've uploaded the file do the following:
- set 'output table' to the table you wish to import the data to (it's preset to save to 'airbnb wishlist' so if that's what you named your table earlier you don't need to change anything)
- keep 'create missing fields in output table' toggled on
- click the import button and wait as Data Fetcher automatically creates the fields for the Airbnb data
- now click on the request and update the URL field with the URL you copied from Simplescraper earlier and click the save button
- click the run button
If all went well you should see your Airbnb wishlist appear in your table. And you're done!
Now that you know how to scrape Airbnb data into Airtable, why stop there? Follow the same steps as above — and simply change the Simplescraper API url — to scrape data from any website into Airtable in seconds, fuss free.
To learn more, explore the Simplescraper docs and Data Fetcher docs or click on chat in the bottom right corner if you'd like help getting started.
Happy scraping!
Links mentioned in the above article:
